


Movie Night

by FlightOfInsanity



Series: Halo Shorts [8]
Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Team as Family, bored spartans, space libraries!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 09:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6512116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlightOfInsanity/pseuds/FlightOfInsanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bored, stuck on an ONI ship, and with no idea when the next mission is coming, the Gammas look for something to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Movie Night

_Seventy four. Seventy five. Seventy six._

Mark sighed wearily and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. He blinked, squinted, and blinked again.

_Seventy sev– … wait…_

“Dammit,” he muttered.

He felt, more than saw, the flat look Ash gave him from where he was slumped over at the table. Ash wasn’t sure what Mark was muttering about but was pretty sure he agreed. He blinked once and huffed, an apathetic acknowledgement of the low outburst.

Olivia, without bothering to move, asked, “You lose count again?”

Mark mumbled something that might’ve been a yes.

The Gammas were bored. Officially being declared KIA and unofficially being assigned to a new kind of top-secret team apparently involved a lot of down time. This was the third ship they’d been transferred to in a month and were just beginning the second week of their stay. Even with their new security clearances there were many areas on the ship where they weren’t allowed to go and the training areas of the small ship were minimal at best.

Lopis was out in another meeting with some ONI officer or another and the three Spartans had been left to their own devices. Bored with the gym and having been redirected at hallway intersections by the ship’s AI more than once they’d returned, somewhat dejectedly, to their quarters.

On this particular ship, they’d been lucky enough to get assigned to a suite – the two bunk rooms connected by a central common area. Currently the Spartans were occupying the common area, none of them showing signs of moving in the near future. Olivia lay flat on her back on the couch, knees bent up and hands folded on her stomach in an almost meditative pose. Ash had attempted to keep himself busy with some reading at the table, but had quickly given up and slumped onto the flat surface, pillowing his head on his arms. Mark was spread-eagled on the floor, staring bleakly up at the ceiling and once again counting the small grey panels.

They didn’t react when the door slid open with a soft pneumatic hiss and a set of boots thumped across the threshold and stopped right inside the door. A moment of silence passed before the door hissed closed.

“Dead, dead, and dead,” Lopis stated, pointing a finger gun at each Spartan in turn.

“Good,” Ash mumbled into his arm. Mark snorted a half-hearted laugh from the floor.

Lopis wandered to the couch, pushing Olivia’s feet to the side and dropping onto the cushion. She stared around at the listless teens for a moment. The ship they were currently on wasn’t a warship and she knew it certainly wasn’t exciting, but this was… something else.

She poked Olivia’s knee. “Have you been in here all day?”

Olivia shrugged, “I guess?”

“Have you eaten?”

She shrugged again. Lopis frowned, looking them over once more.

“That’s it,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Everybody up. Come on, up!”

Slowly the Gammas heaved themselves up and stood in a loose group, staring blandly at the former detective. Lopis held her arms out and herded them toward the door.

“Go do… something.”

Mark stopped, staring at the hand shooing him away. “There’s nothing _to_ do. We’re not even allowed to go anywhere.”

“You’re not allowed to go _everywhere_ , but you’re allowed to go most places,” Lopis countered, pinning Mark with a hard look. She prodded him along toward the door, “Now go be bored somewhere else. I don’t want to see you back in here for at least… let’s say four hours?”

The door hissed open at the proximity of the Spartans and they were stubbornly shepherded into the hallway.

“Four hours,” Lopis repeated, before reaching over and keying the door shut.

The Gammas stared bleakly at the grey bulk of the door before looking at each other and setting off in the general direction of the mess hall. At least that was part of the ship they knew they were allowed to be in.

A few minutes of walking and they were in the small cafeteria. It was empty aside from them, so they rummaged through the available food and took over a table. They munched on their finds as they sat, no less bored, in the uncomfortable chairs.

A formless swirl of orange and white light appeared on a projection plate near the counter as Sal, the ship AI, made her presence known with a light chime.

“I’m not sure this is what Ms. Lopis had in mind when she sent you off,” she said.

“Are you spying on us?” Ash asked.

The swirl of light dimmed and brightened in a non-response. Of course she was spying – this was an ONI ship, after all. Surveillance was a constant.

“I’ve color-coded the doors,” Sal stated abruptly.

“You… what?”

“The doors,” she repeated. “I’ve color-coded them. Hallway junctions as well. Areas off-limits to you will be marked with red. Blue is for areas you are allowed to go.”

The Spartans blinked at the unexpected announcement and the AI continued, “You seemed to be having trouble staying out of restricted areas earlier. I thought this might help.”

Olivia glanced at the others, eyebrows up in surprise, and then turned to Sal’s avatar. “That… actually that will be very helpful. Thank you.”

Sal brightened before winking out of existence with another faint chime.

“Well that was different,” Mark said.

“Agreed,” Ash replied. “Though at least now maybe we won’t have security on us if we look around?”

They lingered at the table for a bit longer, all standing on some unspoken signal and leaving the mess hall. Once in the hall they turned to look at the door. As promised, a faint blue light glowed from around the frame. They looked at the light, looked at each other, shrugged, and set off in search of more blue doors.

For the most part, the blue doors they found led to absolutely nothing exciting – empty conference rooms, a small gym, and a few haphazard storage rooms. They were starting to wonder if the ship even had a purpose, or a crew, when they opened another door and found a room unlike any they’d seen so far.

Rows of shelves spread out to either side of the central walkway leading deeper into the room from the door. About halfway in, the walkway widened into a small seating area – a table with soft lights at each seat took up the front section; the back section occupied by several oddly comfortable-looking chairs and a mismatched couch facing a darkened screen on the back wall.

The Spartans slowly walked farther into the room, looking at the shelves and the objects they contained as they went. Fabric and glossy paper covered rectangles of varying sizes sat safe behind sealed cabinet doors, occasionally spaced apart by a box with some sort of coded identifier printed neatly on the front.

They drew closer to the seating area and noticed the woman sitting at the table. She had warmly tanned skin and dark auburn hair that hung down around her shoulders as she leaned one elbow on the table top, hand against the side of her head. With her other hand, she methodically ran her fingers over the object in front of her. She hadn’t seemed to notice the unannounced visitors.

Olivia cleared her throat, attempting to get the woman’s attention. She didn’t react.

“Excuse me?”

No reaction.

Olivia looked at Mark and Ash and they just shrugged. She turned back toward the table and stepped forward, tapping the woman lightly on the shoulder. The woman leapt up and away with a shout, staring at the Spartans with wide eyes as she pressed a hand to her chest.

“Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,” she said breathlessly, pulling off a previously unseen headset.

“Sorry,” Olivia said with a light smile.

The woman laughed nervously and ran a hand through her hair before waving off the apology.

“Don’t worry about it.” She gave them a more thorough look. “You’re the Spartans, right? The super-secret ones?”

Mark shrugged, “Guilty as charged. I’m Mark. This is Olivia and Ash.”

The woman nodded, “I’m Tristan. Tristan McCullough.” She fiddled with her headset. “So, what brings you down here?”

“Bored, mostly,” Mark replied. “Sal marked all the doors and we’ve just sort of been, you know–“

He trailed off with a small hand gesture and Tristan finished, “Snooping?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded, an understanding smile on her face, and Ash asked, “So what is all this?”

Tristan brightened, “Oh, this is the archives!”

“I thought archives were all digital?”

She nodded, “Most of them are, but there are still collections of old physical media scattered around. I’ve been working to create a full digital record of this collection, just in case.”

“This is a _library_ ship?” Mark asked, with a slight whine.

Tristan shrugged an unhelpful yes.

Ash slapped Mark lightly in the shoulder before nodding at the object Tristan had been working with at the table. “So what is that?”

“What is– Oh, this? This is called a book.”

She picked it up from the table and flipped through the pages. “Physical prints like this stopped being created a couple hundred years ago, but we’ve been slowly recovering what we can, trying to keep them safe. If you want, you’re welcome to read any of them. Just be careful and don’t take anything out of this room.”

Olivia and Ash nodded, interested in the invitation; Mark crossed his arms, less than excited. His eyes were drawn to the mismatched furniture and the large screen behind Tristan.

“So if this is all for reading or whatever, what’s up with that?” he asked, gesturing at the screen.

Tristan smiled wide, “Oh this isn’t just for reading. We’ve got a collection of movies as well as books. That’s for watching them.”

Watching was definitely more interesting than reading, but Mark wasn’t entirely sure what a movie was. His confusion must have shown on his face because Tristan blinked in surprise and asked, “Have you never seen a movie?”

The Spartans looked uncomfortably between each other. Ash waved his hand idly, “We’ve been, uh… you know…”

He trailed off uncertainly and Tristan actually brightened again, a bright smile decorating her face.

“Oh, man,” she exclaimed. She waved excitedly at the seats as she bounded off toward a shelf, “Go! Sit! I am about to introduce you to the best set of movies I’ve found so far!”

The Gammas awkwardly sat themselves in the plush chairs as Tristan bustled about, turning on the screen and queueing up the movies with a brief flurry of activity. She plopped down on the couch, bouncing slightly on the cushions.

“Ok, so. These are from the 1980s. It’s a genre called science fiction and shows what they thought they would have in the future. Obviously some things are a little wrong and the graphics are definitely cheesy compared to what we have now, but just run with it, yeah?”

She pressed a button on the data pad next to her and the movie started playing on the screen. A few minutes of orchestral music played as introductory credits appeared on a star field. While they played, she explained farther, “From what I can tell, these were based on an episodic television show, so the characters aren’t fully explained in the film, and we’re actually starting with the second movie because the first is _terrible_ , but I’ll explain things as we go.”

Some six hours later and they were well into their third movie. Tristan had fallen asleep and was curled soundly into the couch cushions. The Gammas were busy arguing with one another in low whispers about the logistics of time travel via gravitational slingshot as more colorful shenanigans played out on the screen. Various wrappers surrounded them, evidence they had gone to raid the mess hall at least once during their marathon.

Lopis stood, unnoticed, near the far end of the table, fondly watching the young Spartans as they playfully bickered with one another about whales and time travel. She smiled softly, glad the Gammas were finally enjoying themselves and not worrying about missions, and quietly snuck back out of the room.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus points if you know the movies they're watching. :)


End file.
